I am alone on a boat, locked into my own private island; swift brown water to separate me from the rest of those who would claim my time and attention. Lost among the metallic chimes of the marina and consumed by the problems of a confusing electrical system of a boat. Hoping that the red in the mirror is the start of a tan rather than a burn, hoping that the new electronics package are plug and play. For years I have claimed the hoping is not a method; yet, i seem to be quite reliant on it every day here beneath the costal stars.

The stars are everywhere, and yet nowhere at once, as they dance across the night sky ducking behind the curtains of clouds the drift over head. I swing from my hammock stretched out underneath the boom starring up at the sky, and wondering the familiar musing of whom else is also starring up at the same stars. From the deserts of Iraq to the coast of Carolina I have taken comfort, as our forefathers have, from the constellations above.

The first day is always the worst, as you try to hang on to your worldly attachments—messaging, emailing, and sending pictures of what you find to be sublime. It is even hard to sleep on the boat the first night, your body rejects the calming of your mind, rejects the simplicity from which it find pleasure. By the second day, your mind and body begin to embrace the new reality, one in which the ocean breeze is barely strong enough to stave off the sweat of humidity. As my mind rejects the complexity of life in shore i cant help but to find myself contemplating a life of tough work along the waterways of the coast. Days spent bent in toil under the sun, and nights relaxing in waterfront taverns.

Tomorrow I will push away from the bonds of hard ground and sail out into the blue. Pushing only far enough to strain the boat, like stretching before a long race; hoping to find where it will hurt before you injure yourself. The will push Morgan’s Folly into the wind and feel her strain under the weight of the wind and the tides. I will bend her to my will and take to sea like the adventures of old. Searching for my lost treasures. I will find them in the plow of the waves, I will find them in the grain of the hull, and creak of the rigging. I will bend with the boat to the wind and cut the waves with her bow. Tomorrow I will be free, even if it just for a moment. Afterwards I will reward myself with music and scotch as all adventures must, so that I might have a forum to tell these tails of the sea.